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A former Tauranga man who helped create a colourful international television commercial has taken home one of the top gongs for his industry in a prestigious awards ceremony in New York.

Australian-based editor and motion graphics designer Andrew Holmes won the bronze award at the The One Show Awards for Best Editing for his work on a commercial advertising Tiger beer this year.

The ad, which has been on New Zealand screens in recent months, took Mr Holmes six weeks to edit with about 70 hours of footage from three cinema cameras captured over five days of filming. The result is a vibrant and slick 30 second ad focusing on Thailand's use of a wok and people enjoying streetfood.

The former Otumoetai College student said he was "pretty proud" of the honour.

"It's very rare they give out awards for film craft and for editing," he said.

"It was quite surreal standing there on stage in New York on the other side of the world accepting the award. It's incredibly satisfying to be recognised by your peers. Being rewarded for something I love doing is just the icing on the cake."

Mr Holmes said the ultimate test was when no one noticed his work. "

My role was to review the footage closely ... to select shots that not only looked incredible but shots we could use to build a narrative for a short form format, such as a commercial.

A good editor can dramatically influence an audience's emotional response, and if I'm doing my job, the viewer should become so engaged in the visual story and the images on the screen that the technology and my involvement is invisible."

Mr Holmes works at Sydney post-production firm Heckler where he is involved in creating music videos, television ads and cinema commercials.

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"I've always been a visual person. To entice me to complete the final year of high school, the principal allowed me do five subjects of art. Our art department had a single Mac computer but it did have Photoshop 1.0.7," he said.

"This was my introduction to digital design, and I loved it."

Mr Holmes went on to graduate from university with a Masters degree in graphic design and spent five years in London refining his editing and motion graphics skills.

Mr Holmes was hoping to travel to France later this year.

"Some more of my work has been entered into the Cannes Festival this year, fingers crossed a trip to the French Riviera is in my future," he added.